Due to the increasing sales of Japanese cars to the U.S., in 1979, many autoworkers in Detroit were laid off. Vincent Chin, then 27 years old, received racially charged comments and was beaten to death. Two perpetrators Ebens and Nitz received lenient sentencing in a plea bargain which caused public outrage. The case became a rallying point for the Asian American community. Ebens and Nitz were put on trial for violating Chin's civil rights.

Because the subsequent federal prosecution was the result of public pressure from a coalition of many Asian ethnic organizations, Vincent Chin's murder is often considered the beginning of a pan-ethnic Asian American movement. Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Pena produced a documentary â€œWho Killed Vincent Chin?â€ and it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1987.

Mi Chu was the first Chinese-American woman to win a sex discrimination lawsuit under the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

Originally from Taiwan, she obtained a Ph.D. from Harvard University. In 1977, she applied for a job as a librarian with the Library of Congress. She was denied even an interview. She sued and won a sex discrimination-in-employment case against the Library of Congress (Mi Chu Wiens, Plaintiff v. Daniel J. Boorstin, Defendant, Civil Action No. 78â€“1034, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia). Her lawyer sent her a note: "Think of it, Mi Chu Wiens has defeated the United States of America."

She worked in the Library of Congress for 35 years and retired in 2012.

In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974) that school districts must help non-English speaking students learn English. This case reflects the changes in cultural perspectives towards diversity and immigration. The Bilingual Education Act was passed and the school districts were directly funded by the federal government.

Loving v. Virginia is a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage. The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored". The Supreme Court's unanimous decision determined that this prohibition was unconstitutional, reversing Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 marked fundamental changes in Americaâ€™s immigration policy. Immigration increased fourfold in five years. The Act abolished the national origins quota system started in the 1920â€™s, and replaced it with a system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents.

During the debate of this law on the Senate floor, Senator Ted Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the Act, said, "...our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset...." These assertions would later prove grossly inaccurate. The 1965 Act had greatly changed the face of the American population. Minority had become majority in many states and partially resulting in the election of the first black American President Barrack Obama.

The Civil rights movement was at its peak when Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous â€œI have a dreamâ€ speech on August 28, 1963. Three months later, President John F. Kennedy was murdered and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. The Act outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and public accommodations.

Under The Refugee Relief Act of 1953, a refugee is defined as someone who lacks the essentials of life. There was a 2,000 refugee quota allocated to the Chinese living in Hong Kong. Famous writer Eileen Chang applied in 1955 under this Act and her application was approved quickly. Many of Eileen Chang works were made into movies including Li Angâ€™s â€œLust, Cautionâ€.

After World War II, American soldiers fathered many mixed-parentage children who were not accepted by the local Asian communities. Because of their torment, Congress passed the â€œWar Brides Actâ€ to bring them back to the land of their fathers. But no more than 3 percent found their fathers in their adoptive homeland. In 1982, Congress passed â€œPublic Law 97-359â€ which officially defined â€œAmeriasiansâ€ as those born in Asia to a U.S. military father and an Asian mother. The law allowed them to become U.S. citizens. Examples of well-known Ameriasians are entertainers Lai Pei-Xia, Tien LuLu, Tony Wang and sportsman Zhi-long Zhen.

They said my father was an American soldier stationed in Taiwan in 1958. My mother met him at a bar and I was born the next year. I have never met my father, I donâ€™t even know his name.

My mother went to Japan to make a better living soon after I was born, my grandma raised me. She passed away when I was 13, my mother came back for the funeral, she promised to adopt me and even hired a lawyer for my immigration. The lawyer later told me that my mother had terminated his service, and that I would not be going to America. As an adult, I became a singer and went to Washington D.C. to perform for a group of overseas Chinese. I got the news that my mother wanted to see me. We finally met, the media went berserk, but I did not feel anything. We met in the hotel for a few minutes and parted. I have never seen her since.

Lai Pei-Sha â€˜s mother worked as a helper for an American military family in Taipei. She noticed how respectful American men treated women. She was especially fond of their children with blue eyes and blond hair. She called them "baby doll", and she decided one day to have one her own. She later met Lai Pei-Shaâ€™s father who was a friend of her employer.

Once Lai Pei-Sha was born, she was the baby doll her mother always dreamed of. Eventually Lai Pei-Sha found her father in the U.S. Despite the reunion, Lai Pei-Sha never talked about her father afterwards.

Tony was born in 1973 to an American soldier stationed in Tainan and a Taiwanese mother. Although Tony never met his father, as long as he could remember, his only dream was to find him.

Shortly after Tony's birth, his mother left him to seek a better life in Japan and he was placed with her friend Po Po in Taichung. Luckily for Tony, he grew up with plenty of love and attention from Po Po and her family. As an adult, Tony catapulted to stardom as an award-winning rock musician. Despite fame & fortune, he still longed to know the father he never knew. Fast forward to 2014, Tony met Dr. Chang C. Chen, an American lawyer who was doing research on the subject of Amerasians for this exhibit. Tony gave Dr. Chen the only information he had on his father â€”a piece of paper with â€œW. D. Brown, Texasâ€ written on the corner.

Dr. Chen tracked down 46 people with exactly the same name in Texas. Someone from the Facebook page "Tainan AB" tipped off Dr. Chen that Tonyâ€™s father could be the W.D. Brown in Cincinnati. Dr. Chen reached out to him. Her calls went unanswered. As a last ditch effort, she suggested to Tony, "Why donâ€™t you leave him a message, and if he does not answer, we know he does not want to acknowledge your existence." Her strategy
worked. W. D. Brown returned Tony's call the very next day.

Father and son were tearfully reunited on August 1, 2014 via Skype.
In November 15, 2014, W.D. Brown visited Tony in Taiwan, 41 years
after he left.

Although the Navy refused to accept Japanese-American women throughout World War II, some Chinese-American women volunteered to serve. Marietta (Chong) Eng decided to enlist in the WAVES. The Navy trained Eng as an occupational therapist. Eng helped rehabilitate sailors and officers who had lost arms and legs in the war, teaching them to accomplish the many tasks of daily living.

Rita Chow joined the US Army Nurse Corps in 1954 as a second lieutenant. The Army assigned her as a Medical Surgery Nursing Instructor at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, Colorado. She was soon promoted to first lieutenant and became an instructor to medical corpsmen at Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas. She was discharged from active duty in 1958 and spent the next 11 years in the Army Reserve.

Colonel Yeu-Tsu "Margaret" Lee, US Army Medical Corps, graduated from Harvard Medical School and was a female surgeon.

She was one of four active duty surgeons assigned to the 13th Evacuation Hospital during Operation Desert Storm. Before World War II, American medical schools did not accept female students. Most of the males went to fight the war during World War II, which create a shortage of men. Medical schools had no alternative but to accept female medical students.

Sergeant Julia (Larm) Ashford joined the WAC in 1944 and served in the Pacific Theater of Operations. She remained in the Army until 1948 when she enlisted in the newly formed Air Force where she served until 1953.

A unique group of civilian women, Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) worked directly with the Army Air Forces on the home front during World War II flying planes from factories to air bases, testing planes for mechanical problems, and towing targets for aerial gunnery students to practice shooting. WASPs performed these dangerous assignments willingly.

During the years when male pilots were needed at the front. Thirty-eight WASP died in the line of duty, one being a Chinese-American, Hazel (Ying) Lee.

Lee flew pursuit ( fighter ) aircrafts from the production factories to air bases across the continental United States. She "named" the planes she flew by inscribing Chinese characters in lipstick on the tails. Her husband was an officer in the Chinese Air Force. Lee died in a two-plane crash when her plane and that of a colleague received identical instructions from an air traffic controller on their approach to Great Falls AFB, Montana.

Maggie Gee started as a mechanical draftsman at Mare Island, California. She was accepted by the WASP. She took military pilots up for qualifying flights to renew their instrument ratings and co-piloted B-17 Flying Fortress bombers through mock dogfights staged to train bomber gunners.

Army nurse Helen (Pon) Onyett risked her life tending wounded soldiers from the landing craft that came ashore in North Africa. She was awarded the Legion of Merit for her actions during the war and retired from the Corps as a full colonel.

The Nisei WACs, Americans "with Japanese faces," were expected to show the Japanese what Americans of Japanese ancestry were like, and to help build bridges across a cultural gap. General MacArthur, however, did not approve of enlisted WACs serving overseas. He gave the women a choice of returning to the United States as WACs or being discharged from the Army and serving one-year contracts in Japan as civilians with US federal civil service status. All 13 agreed to stay in Japan as civil servants.

In 1943, the Women's Army Corps recruited a unit of Chinese-American women to serve with the Army Air Forces as "Air WACs." The Army lowered the height and weight requirements for the women of this particular unit, referred to as the Madame Chiang Kai-Shek Air WAC unit. Air WACs served in a large variety of jobs, including aerial photo interpretation, air traffic control, and weather forecasting. WAC was dissolved in 1978.